


A Day of Firsts

by BlackDog9314



Series: Castiel Loves Honeybees [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Cute, Feels, First Kiss, Gen, Graduation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-10
Updated: 2015-03-10
Packaged: 2018-03-17 05:30:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,722
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3517208
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlackDog9314/pseuds/BlackDog9314
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's Dean and Castiel's graduation day, and Castiel may be leaving more than his hometown behind.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Day of Firsts

**Author's Note:**

> By popular request in one of my groups I've written a sequel to a little ficlet from a few weeks ago.  
> Please let me know how you're liking it :) kudos and comments are so very appreciated!

Castiel twirled his graduation cap absently as he looked over at Dean, its tassel fanning out with a flash of bright blue over his lap. Dean, in the driver's seat of his formidable black muscle car, looked as relaxed and easy as he always seemed to. There was nothing in his movements or facial expression that indicated he had just graduated high school with Castiel not two hours before.

They had walked the stage only a few students apart, Williams and Winchester. But to look at Dean you wouldn't know it; his face was quirked in its familiar full-lipped smile.

Cas felt as light as air, himself, resplendent with the realization that high school was over and he would soon be enrolling in a reputable state school not far from home to study environmental science.

Dean would not be attending college, but he didn't seem too worried about his future, and Castiel was not worried for him. He had told Cas more than once that he planned to go into 'the family business' with his father, a business which, as far as Castiel could glean, was some form of livestock care. Dean was more than capable with his hands, and practical. The very car they rode in was one that Dean had spent years painstakingly rebuilding.

Many things like that seemed to come easily to Dean in a way they didn't to Castiel.

Dean had been on the football team since before he and Cas became friends (one fateful morning their sophomore year), and while Dean'd had a steady string of pretty, petite girlfriends, Castiel had his beehive near the greenhouse out back of the school and the last post-it notes his mother had left around the house. While Dean was hardy and had a back-breaking work ethic and a boisterous disposition, Castiel remained fine-boned and so intellectual he tended to estrange those around him.

But despite their differences, Dean had stuck on Cas like letter jacket-wearing, tanned-skinned glue, and here they were over two years later, Dean giving Castiel a lift home from the ceremony.

Dean would likely have to leave immediately after he dropped him off, Castiel knew. Dean had gotten invitations to more than a few after-parties held by various members of the football team and their families. But it contented Cas to spend this little bit of time with him today, rolling down the highway in Dean's prized Impala with the smell of grass and leather and rain surrounding him.

Castiel lifted one of his hands to his head, smoothing it through his hair, knowing it would be in a disorderly state after the hours of wearing the graduation cap and the sweat that had pooled beneath the cheap material. Dean hummed to himself as Black Sabbath drifted from the speakers and Cas listened, knowing Dean was too self-conscious to sing and that this close-lipped humming was all he'd ever hear.

Castiel tried not to feel disappointed when they arrived at his house and Dean idled the car beside the driveway of the butter-yellow two-story he had grown up in.

But when Dean then parked he brightened considerably.

“Lemme say hi to your dad,” Dean said as he habitually walked around the front of the car and opened Castiel's door before he could let himself out.

Castiel knew that phrase meant Dean planned on hanging out with him for a little while before he left to go out with other friends. They'd played this game since the first time Dean ever came over.

Dean had offered him a ride home not long after sending Alistair skulking away and out of his life (an almost unbelievable exit considering their cat-and-mouse history). When they'd gotten to the house Castiel's father had been on the front porch, smoking a cigarette and rubbing his eyes tiredly.

Gabriel Williams was a kind-looking man, a little soft almost everywhere with gold eyes and longish, light brown hair. He always looked sad when he thought Castiel wasn't watching him, though Castiel was guilty of the same thing.

Gabriel had tensed up when the Impala darkened his proverbial doorstep the first time, putting out his cigarette with a shiny black shoe and relaxing only when Castiel emerged with Dean in tow. Dean had smiled at Gabriel, holding out a hand and shaking firmly, introducing himself as a friend of Cas's, someone who admired the beehive he had designed and cared for.

Gabriel had looked into his son's face intently, searching for any sign that this was not the case, and found none. He'd eventually smiled back at Dean and waved them inside, and the ritual had stuck, though with a few differences.

Nowadays Dean and Castiel made their way through the front door and into the living room where Gabriel usually was, working on some project at the little desk wedged into the corner, surrounded by stray pens and old coffee cups. Cas would get his attention and he'd turn around to greet them with a tired smile and an inquiry as to how school had been, his long hair messy and his reading glasses askew. After they answered him (sometimes positively and sometimes negatively, depending on the week) and asked about his work in kind, he invariably rolled his eyes and told them they didn't want to know. They always believed him, and after laughing with him took the stairs two at a time up to Castiel's bedroom. There they usually sat around and shot the shit, or did homework. It had become a comfortable routine, one that Castiel had long been used to.

This particular day was different considering graduation, and Gabriel Williams was not in his rightful place in the living room but driving back to his house from the school just as Dean and Cas had. He had stayed behind a while to talk to Castiel's earth science teacher, Ms. Kali Yadav, whom Cas had noticed his eye lingering on after the caps had been thrown.

Gabriel and Castiel had decided a week or so earlier that they would spend that night together instead of throwing Cas a party or going out to eat. Cas had agreed mostly because he hadn't wanted to say that if they were to have a party the only people attending would be the two of them and Dean, but he was looking forward to the time with his father.

Castiel and Dean let themselves into the house with Cas's spare key, waiting in the living room for Gabriel to arrive. Not long after, he did, giving both of the boys additional congratulatory hugs and reflexively offering Dean a snack, which he politely refused. After a bit of happy small talk near the front door Castiel explained to his father that he and Dean were going to spend some time together before he went out for the evening. Gabriel consented good-naturedly, knowing he'd have his son to himself after, and settled himself on the sofa in front of the TV after he'd preheated the oven for dinner and pulled out some thawed chicken.

Dean and Castiel walked up the narrow flight of stairs to the second story of the house, taking in the wide, familiar hallway and the sight of Castiel's bedroom door, chipped-white and decorated childishly with old, faded stickers of bees and flowers.

The inside of his room was not much different, reflecting an abiding love of honeybees. He had old and new posters of bees and their hives, different books on the best flowers to plant to attract them and the benefits of having a hive near a garden. He also had an almost embarrassing number of bumblebee-shaped plushes and yellow and black-striped blankets and pillow cases. Cas's room hadn't changed much since he was a child, and it was something he had done intentionally after it became just he and his father inhabiting the house.

Soon he and Dean were settled on opposite ends of his bed, chatting casually as they always seemed able to do. Dean lounged back on the pile of pillows, stretching like a cat as his shirt rode up slightly on his abdomen. Castiel made himself look away from the smooth expanse of skin there-- _stop doing this to yourself_ \--and focus on what Dean was saying.

“...but I figure it this way, we have a few months before you leave, and even when you go you can visit for breaks, or I can come up 'n' see you, you know, like October break and Christmas. I was readin' the other day that your school has a greenhouse like ours did, you could probably do the same thing you did here and petition for funding and design a--”

“You want to come visit me?” Castiel knew his tone was incredulous but wasn't sure how to change it.

Dean, visiting _him_?

“Well, duh. You're like, my...my best friend. Why wouldn't I?” Dean sounded almost hurt, and when Castiel simply stared at him in response he stood up from the bed and turned away, looking for all the world as though he was intently absorbed in the books and knickknacks arranged on Cas's shelves.

But Castiel knew better.

“Dean, you're _my_ best friend, I'm not yours. You have Viktor and Charlie,” Castiel heard how strange the words felt being said aloud for the first time, and wished he could take them back when Dean didn't answer immediately.

A minute, two minutes, three minutes passed, and Castiel was beginning to wonder if he had made Dean change his mind about visiting. The thought made his stomach lurch.

“Dean, I--”

But Dean turned around, his hand now holding something Castiel couldn't see that he'd presumably gotten from the shelf. He sat back down on the bed and wordlessly dumped what it was he had been holding into the space between them.

There lay the bumblebee-shaped hairpins, even brassier with age and bent out of shape from where Alistair had indirectly damaged them.

“You didn't wear them on your gown.”

“I couldn't, Dean. They're broken,” Castiel's voice had dropped almost to a whisper by the end, and he became afraid to look into Dean's eyes again, so he stared at the pins between the two of them.

“Bent doesn't mean broken.”

Castiel nodded numbly, and Dean paused a moment before he said, “She's proud of you either way, though, Cas, pins or not. I just wish _you_ could be proud of you. Those looked good on you the first day I ever talked to you, they woulda looked good on you today.”

Castiel knew Dean was referring to his mother and felt his hands clench a little without his consent.

“Are you? Proud of me?” Castiel's voice was still a whisper.

“Yeah, I am.”

Castiel finally gathered the strength to look up at Dean again, smiling a weak smile that Dean returned to him along with a light touch on the hinge of his jaw. Castiel leaned into it, having to keep himself from laughing in a giddy sort of relief at the reassurance, at the knowledge that Dean still liked him. He didn't notice what Dean was doing with his free hand until he felt the cool scrape of one of the bumblebee pins in his hair near his forehead, and then its sister soon after.

Castiel gasped and automatically settled his fingers on one of the little bees, feeling it nestled where Dean had placed it, metallic and smooth against the curly texture of his hair.

"They look just as good, even a little bent, Cas.”

Cas impulsively leaned forward and pressed his face against Dean's shoulder, his cheek resting near where his shirt collar dropped off into warm skin. Dean responded by hugging him tightly to his chest, as Castiel had known he would. Dean had never been one to shy away from touch the way Cas had a habit of doing. Castiel breathed in the scent of him, his eyes closing.

Dean smelled like sunshine and gunpowder and sometimes cologne but mostly like soap and toothpaste and the good kind of sweat.

It was not the first time they had hugged silently over the years, Castiel going pliant in Dean's arms and Dean pressing his nose lightly into the hair on the crown of his head. Castiel could feel Dean's breath washing over his face, making his eyelashes flutter and warming the tops of his cheekbones.

No, it was not the first time Dean had held him, but it was the first time that Castiel felt Dean lay a gentle kiss on his forehead like a whispered prayer, barely there and shorter than the time it took him to open his eyes again.

Dean said nothing of it, and neither did Castiel. But they were happy there, on Castiel's striped blankets with his mother's bent-not-broken pins in his hair and the words she would have said hanging in the still air above them.

In the warmth of the mid-May sun slanting through Castiel's window and the knowledge that they had passed a milestone that day, they were proud of themselves, and Castiel couldn't find it in himself to question _why?_ or _me?_ when Dean cupped his chin and tilted his face upwards. Dean kissed him as if he was not leaving in three months, as if he was not a strange boy with a dead mother and a body still scarred from Alistair's mistreatment. Dean kissed him real, kissed him into being the same way he had held him and acknowledged his pain when he cried two years before.

Castiel kissed him back as best as he knew how, having no experience, and Dean clung to him, his hands tense and unyielding like a child's.

When they pulled apart Dean said, almost breathlessly, “You're my best friend, Cas. I wanna visit you and call you and talk and stuff when you go. And...I'll still be here when you wanna come home.”

Dean Winchester, who had not batted an eyelash asking Lisa Braeden to prom, who had not stuttered as he told Alistair to go fuck himself the morning they had met, was utterly bereft of his usual composure, and it broke Castiel open.

He pressed his cheek against Dean's and said, “I guess you don't know, but I love you.”

*

That evening, sitting beside his father at the dinner table Castiel wore the bumblebee pins, a grin he couldn't seem to shake alighting his features.

Gabriel saw the pins and touched a finger to one of them with a sad smile.

“These were Amelia's. I wondered where they'd gone.”

“I wore them once,” Castiel said in response.

“I've missed them. Will you take them with you to school?”

“I will. I want to wear them more. There's no reason not to. They aren't broken,” Castiel said. Then, almost as if it was an afterthought, “I'm not, either.”

Gabriel looked surprised at the words, but nodded after having a moment or two to process them.

“You're not, kiddo. You're the light of my life. You're gonna face the same things she did, and you're gonna overcome them.”

Castiel reached out and covered his father's hand with his own.

If a tear fell down Gabriel's face, neither of them mentioned it.

*

Later that year in early October, as outside the weather was beginning to chill and the trees to lose their leaves, Castiel received a package from his hometown. Knowing who it was from without reading the return address, he tore into it while still inside the university post office.

Sure enough, the book about bees and their historical significance had a penned message inside the front cover in a familiar hand:

 _Cas, I hope you like this. It had a lot of good reviews on amazon._ ~~_Love_ ~~ _Miss you._

_-Dean_

Castiel smiled to himself as he looked at the other item the box contained besides his new book, which was a bottle of perfume, abstractly bee-shaped with yellow polka dots and black stripes, with a small, white flower adhered to its little top. It was sweet to look at, and its label said it was a honey-scented perfume.

Castiel hugged the box to his chest as he began the trek back to his room, and the midday sun glinted on the little brass pins arranged in his dark hair.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!


End file.
